Brain Food for Cops
by Daphne B
Summary: Chris thinks Rita is working too hard and insists they take a mid-day break. A fluffy one-shot set post Season 4, Ep. 13.


Rita sat at her desk staring intently at the computer screen. She really preferred to read case reports in hard copy, but the damn printer was on the fritz again and, budgets being what they were, she was expecting it to come back on-line sometime in the next decade or two. In the meantime, she had two new autopsy reports to compare to three older files sitting on her desk. These murders weren't going to solve themselves. So here she was, scrolling back and forth, up and down, little pixels of information blurring in front of her tired eyes.

The autopsy findings didn't make sense, though. Rita knew Keisha was damn good at her job. So Rita was sure that the pieces that weren't falling together in these cases had to do with something she was missing rather than a mistake the Medical Examiner had made. But **what** was she missing? It was driving Rita crazy.

….

Chris breezed through the neon palm tree cut-out doors to the squad room, smiling at a few of his co-workers on his way in. When he was half-way across the room, he saw his partner lost to the outside world. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear and was absent-mindedly nibbling on her lower lip, as she almost always did when deep in concentration. She was leaning forward on her elbows while her perceptive green eyes appeared to bore holes in the new-and-improved computer screen that now occupied a good third of her desk top. Chris noted two coffee mugs placed haphazardly among the files strewn over the desk. This was a sure sign to Chris that Rita had let the coffee in both go ice cold without bothering to finish the contents of either. And that she'd been sitting there puzzling over their two most recent dead bodies for the better part of the last three hours that he had been out going over trial prep with Donovan.

Chris slowed his pace but kept his eyes fixed on Rita as he made his way toward her. His desk faced hers and was directly in front of him now. But instead of heading to his chair, he veered slightly to the right as he kept inching closer to Rita, willing her to sense him staring at her, sneaking up on her. She paid no attention to her surroundings and was oblivious to the man she regularly referred to as her best friend as he was standing now just inches from her desk. Chris leaned over, his head in line with hers, his lips close to her left ear: "You work too hard, Sammy," he said brightly.

Rita jumped, but stayed seated as she turned her head toward him. "Chris! You're back. And you startled me. You shouldn't sneak up on people like that."

Her words were an admonishment, but she was smiling, faintly and distractedly, but smiling. "This case is driving me **crazy** ," she grumbled, her hands gesticulating a bit wildly on either side of her head as if to emphasize the point. "I know there's a connection. Everything at all five of the crime scenes points to a connection. But the differences in the stab wounds, and the serrations on the knives, just don't make sense. There's got to be something I'm missing. What am I missing?" Rita's words came out in a rush, rehearsing the same conversation they'd had while briefing the Captain first thing this morning, right before Chris left for Donovan's office.

"I don't know, Sammy. But I know you and I will figure it out. But not on empty stomachs. Come on. I'll buy you lunch." Chris was standing back up at his full height now, his trademark, lady-killer "Lorenzo grin" spreading across his face, pleased with his own generosity.

"You, Lorenzo? **You're** going to buy **me** lunch? Trial prep must have gotten a lot more fun since I last did it if you're feeling so lavish."

"No, Sammy, still nothing fun about it. But I care about your health. And this…" he said disdainfully, picking up the two half-empty coffee mugs harboring, as he had suspected, the cold and stale smelling remains of her neglected efforts at caffeinating her way to clarity on the case… "this is not healthy. This is not nutrition."

Rita was smiling now. How could she not? Chris's smiles were infectious.

He was looking at her, a coffee mug in each hand, nodding his head at her knowingly. "You, my friend, you need food. Food will fuel that big brain of yours and then… then you and I are going to bust this case wide open."

An amused Rita was leaning back in her chair now, looking up at Chris. "Uh huh. Well if that's true, partner, if one magic meal is going to bust this case right open, then it's going to have to be mighty powerful. Extra nutritious. You must have someplace very special in mind for this lunch you're buying… Oh, I bet I know where we're going," Rita's eyes brightened and started to dance playfully. "We're going to Il Palio, aren't we?" Rita nearly chirped, naming the outrageously expensive Italian place that had just gone in near the shopping district along one of the ritzier beaches in town. "Donnie tells me it's exceptional."

Donnie "Dogs" DeBarto was a major player in the local organized crime scene and their sometime-informant who had a full-time crush on Detective Sergeant Rita Lee Lance. He also had exquisite taste in Italian food.

"Huh ha," Chris chuckled, trying to intervene in her fun. But Rita was too quick. "Unless you were thinking of Provence," she said, naming the five-star French restaurant she'd been regularly telling him about since interviewing one of the servers there for another case they had worked a few months back. Rita was usually more of a burger-and-fries kind of woman, but she liked fine food on occasion, too. "Oh, Chris, that is so sweet. You know how much I've wanted to try it. But really? Provence? It's too much."

Pausing just half a beat, she changed her mind. "But maybe for lunch. You're right." She was having more and more fun with this now that she had gotten rolling. The deer-in-the-headlights look on Chris's face was too precious to let him off the hook just yet. She stood up and stretched her cramped and sore arms while smiling wide at her partner. "I'm sure it's much more affordable at lunch than dinner. And since we're on duty, we can't drink, so that will keep costs down. But a nice salad, a few appetizers, maybe some crème brûlée for dessert…" She tilted her head slightly and leaned in to him just a bit, saying semi-confidentially, "Christopher, you are too good to me."

"Very funny, Sammy," Chris said. He was 98% sure she was teasing him, but sometimes he couldn't tell. Rita was, in his mind, his partner first and a woman second. And while he almost always felt like they understood each other so well they could complete each others' sentences, she **was** still a woman. He understood Rita, his partner and best friend. But women? He was pretty sure he didn't understand women.

He was also a cop. A civil servant living on city employee wages. And while he'd move heaven and earth for this particular woman, he could not—and would not—spend two weeks' salary on lunch. Especially since he'd already had his credit card denied enough times when out to dinner with Jillian to know he had no intention of feeling that particular embarrassment again. So before this got any further out of hand, he put the coffee mugs back down on her desk, turned around so he was standing beside this beautiful woman partner of his, put his arm around her and said, "Sammy, you know what kind of brain food solves murder cases? Raul's chili dogs and fries. That, my friend, is cop brain food." He was maneuvering her toward the door now, leaning down close to make his point clear: a cop's lunch comes from a food truck in the station parking lot.

"You're probably right, Sam. Besides, you should wait to take me to Provence. I hear it's much better for dinner than lunch," Rita said, laughing while jabbing him lightly in the ribs as they made their way through the doors, down the corridor, and out into the Palm Beach sunshine.


End file.
